Commentary

The jury system is one of the glories of American law, giving ordinary people responsibility over many serious matters between the government and its citizens. Thursday’s acquittal of seven people who occupied a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon could be taken as a vindication of that institution. Or it could be taken as proof that even the noblest human inventions are subject to human fallibility.

If you’re a high school student deciding where to apply for college, or the parent of a student, you’ve probably done a fair amount of research. Even so, there are some schools that might have escaped your notice, such as MCPHS University, LIU Brooklyn, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Babson College.

The Europeans — in particular the French and British — continue to labor mightily with the major problem that migrants from the wars of the Middle East and of poverty in Africa pose for them. A million came in 2015.

We may never know why the USA Holiday charter bus was going faster than was safe on Interstate 10 in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., last Sunday morning. The driver can’t say because he was one of the 13 people killed when the bus plowed into the back of a big rig truck. Nor was the bus equipped with a “black box” recorder that might have indicated mechanical failure.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt defeated Kansas’ Gov. Alfred Landon in 46 of the 48 states, thereby creating the jest, “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.” Eight decades later, New England has gone from the Republicans’ last redoubt in a bad year to their least receptive region in any year. Its six states have made 36 decisions in the past six presidential elections and the score is Democrats 35, Republicans 1 — New Hampshire supported George W. Bush in 2000. Republicans hold just two of New England’s 21 congressional seats, and two of 12 Senate seats, those of Maine’s Susan Collins and New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte.

A recent study by researchers at McMaster University in Canada indicated that heavy exertion while angry or stressed triples the chance of a heart attack. While the results would seem to discourage the idea of exercise as a stress-reliever, a deeper examination of the study validates what doctors have said for years: Moderate exercise is the best exercise.